Only, the result might prove surprising. Because though physically confined in time and space, Moore found her mind departing elsewhere. As though only in quiet can memories blossom into their true richness. “Its 1995, before the roads were paved,” she sings in opener ‘Koszmary’, harking back to a childhood in Phoenix, “the dust storms in July testing our tiny legs / laughing at the danger then / watch our bodies disappear.” The song also introduces the album’s distinctive sound, where ethereal and idiosyncratic details coalesce into a kind of carnivalesque playfulness.

The record returns to Arizona in the way of a dreaming mind, a repeated image bubbling to the surface. Take ‘Canals of Our City’, a dispatch from the life of a teenage crust punk which describes a youth spent in the canals of Phoenix with something like fondness. But then the second half moves on to the murder of a boyfriend’s cousin and the fracturing impact of such violence. “You got the call that he was gone / murder in the first degree,” Moore sings as though suddenly back there again, “disappeared for days without a phone, without a warning / cruel are all the ways this world will give you life, unravelling.”

But of course the mind is far from a one channel package, and stillness lets in all sorts of broadcasts. Tracks like ‘Mania’ offer a view into the less welcome visitors, while ‘Slapstick’ dwells on the uncertainty of past social encounters. The theme is continued in ‘Goliath’, a spacious, woozy track where vacuous “pleasantries at a function” descend into the search for an exit, and the yearning for solitude overtakes everything.

go
its ok that you wanted to
fall back into that thing you do
go
it’s ok that you want to go
to a place you can be alone

What emerges is delicate line between peace and unease, a sensation which fades against the wider tragedy of the pandemic yet resonates deeply all the same. For life’s relentless motion eased for some, and new ways of living began to suggest themselves. “Wander to the window / a patch of sun to see / softening the first snow / softening in me,” as Moore sings on ‘Saddle Up, Cowboy’, as though the slow movements of those days brought physical changes. But then songs like ‘Cheers!’ reveal the anxiety that follows into the quiet too, and of course there were all the good times to mourn.

It is the stripped back ‘A Body’ which reflects on this experience most fully, probing into the strangeness of living as both a physical object and mental state. If Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes discovers anything from its time in isolation, it’s that the wheels of consciousness keep turning, both a blessing and a curse. “Where does the mind go when a body’s finished?” asks the final line, as though having experienced the kaleidoscopic potential of thought and memory. It seems suddenly impossible that something something so vivid and powerful can merely cease to be.

Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes is out now via Bar/None Records and you can get it from the koleżanka Bandcamp page.

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Later this year, Justus Proffit will release the resulting album, SpeedStar, on Hoboken-based label Bar/None Records. In anticipation, he has released the record’s first single, ‘Burning the Ground,’ a pop song that combines influences from the last three decades—from Elliott Smith to Hovvdy.

Written and recorded during a stay with a friend on Guemes Island, WA, the song is inspired by the wildfires that were burning in the area at the time. The image of the fires become a metaphor for the juxtaposing themes of impermanence, destruction and control, and draws parallels between the beauty and chaos of the natural world with the beauty and chaos that constitute a life.

“It’s about destroying yourself and destroying things around you,” Proffit explains of the song in a Q&A with FLOOD Magazine, “but also with destruction comes rebuilding. Basically understanding that there is always divine beauty in complete chaos, and it’s all perfectly balanced.”

It could be beautiful
Completely in control

SpeedStar will be released via Bar/None Records on 20th August. Preorder it now from the Justus Proffit Bandcamp page, including on 12″ LP and cassette.

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After several releases in the intervening years, including 2019’s Playin’ On a Cloud, Pardoner are back with a brand new record, Came Down Different. This time to be released via Bar/None Records., the album digs further into the Pardoner aesthetic, adding an angular menace that juxtaposes with the slacker vibes and sardonic delivery to create a distinctively deadpan style.

First single ‘Donna Says’ provides the first glimpse at the approach. Opening with cloudy distortion and a foreboding clamour of noise, the song kicks into an almost sunny rhythm. But beneath the surface lurks something darker and heavier. Freeland’s lyrics are as barbed as ever too, but set against everything else they don’t come off as critical so much as fatalistic. Pardoner conjure the world we live in—often strange, always infuriating, yet crushingly banal too. What option is there but a kind of ironic surrender?

Am I falling out of favor?
Am I maybe not your flavor? Pour my heart onto the table
Trade it in for cash
Because I want the money
Oh yeah I want it bad

The song comes complete with a video directed by Katayoon Yousefbigloo, which really excavates the moods and themes of the track and maintains the 90s aesthetic too.

Came Down Different is out via Bar/None Records on the 14th May and you can pre-order it now from the Pardoner Bandcamp page.

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“There’s always been this crazy connection between the three of us,” explains Knight. “We clicked musically, but we also felt like we’d known each other for years. We were all outsider kids in school who went through the same coming-of-age thing. When I think of a band, this is how I think it should be.”

Together Rose Dorn make indie rock songs that feel like both commiserations and celebrations of this otherness, resulting in an aesthetic that the band’s bio describes as a combination of “elements of bedroom rock, twangy desert gaze, and melancholic California pop.” After two short EPs, Rose Dorn have just released their debut full-length, Days You Were Leaving, a record which utilises this feeling of being different

Lead single ‘Champ’ sets the scene, a sweet and earnest pop song about the connection between the band members, a gaze back at the high school digital friendship that started it all. “At some point I realized I was dissociating,” says Knight, “cut off from the world around me, only able to feel peace when I was actively connecting with my two best friends through a screen. Nothing else really mattered.” The song comes complete with a video, the debut music video from director Julia Ling Kelleher, which sees a chain of dominoes snake around and tumble in perfect synchrony.

In comparison the opening of ‘Shaking’ feels big and bold, a left-field pop song that sounds like it could’ve been an underground hit in the early 90s. But after around forty seconds things slide to a halt, Knight taking over vocal duties as the guitars subside into a dreamy sway. The song morphs again towards the end, keeping things fresh and dynamic across its three minute run-time. Thematically the song is darker than it sounds. As the band explain, it’s “about a select few experiences we’ve seen spin people out of control, and the coping mechanisms that have brought them back to reality […] from the rejection by a supposed soulmate to the death of a loved one.”

Another song that deals with a sense of detachment, ‘Collar’ finds Knight pining for someone long-gone and the explores the rootless feeling of lacking a clear direction for the future.

I feel like a stray dog
with a beautiful collar
on a beautiful lawn
keep searching for someone who i’ve lost
but there’s no signs on poles
telling me to come home

There’s a considerable degree of diversity across the album. From the hushed slow gathering of opener ‘Big Thunder’, to the short shot of LVL UP-style slacker pop of ‘LRP’ and ‘HYC’, Rose Dorn continue to surprise throughout. ‘Deathwish’ is a standout, all dreamy sweetness meets a kind of morbid matter-of-factness (Rose Dorn exploring their sense of otherness with lines like “Shoelace ‘round her neck, keeps her head on tight, she says she’s talked to god, they’ve been staying up all night”). There’s also a really cool trading of vocals where Knight’s lines sound like dialogue in a short story, giving the whole thing the feel of a strange narrated daydream.

Talking of dreamy, ‘Heaven II’ feels fogged by a sleepy torpor, sparse guitar and cooed vocals combining with minimal percussion to create a kind of slo-mo lo fi pop, while closing track ‘Wish’ is also content to take its own time, although burns bright with a much fuller sound. It’s illustrative of Days You Were Leaving in lots of ways, not least in the way it approaches reflective themes in its own unique, bittersweet, way. It shows that the otherness mentioned at the beginning can often be your greatest strength, and that Rose Dorn have come to value it amidst the shifting seas of life in the twenty-first century. The band put it best in their notes on the album:

“This record is about coming to terms with the complexities of life in time, of learning to love and accept where you’ve been and where you’re going while remembering to love and accept where you are.”

Days You Were Leaving is out now on Bar/None Records. Get it from the Bar None Records webstore or the Rose Dorn Bandcamp page. The band are also playing some West coast shows soon. Check the dates below and head along if you’re able:

Thursday, September 19th – Zebulon – Los Angeles, CA – Ex Hex, Seth Bogart
Friday, September 20th – Starline Social Club / Crystal Cavern- Oakland, CA – Fake Fruit
Saturday, September 21st – Arcata, CA Blondies w/ Spirit Notes , OMW2HEAVEN
Sunday, September 22nd – Portland, OR – Vinyl Underground w/ OMW2HEAVEN
Tuesday, September 24th – Olympia, WA – Le Voyeur – w/ Flying Fish Cove, OMW2HEAVEN
Wednesday, September 25th – Seattle, WA – Vera Project, w/ Dogbreth, Bread Pilot
Friday, September 27th – Boise, ID – Castle Greyskull w/ Buttstuff & OMW2HEAVEN
Saturday, September 28th – Moscow, ID – Modest Music Fest
Monday, September 30th – Reno, NV – Holland Project – w/ OMW2HEAVEN
Wednesday, October 2nd – Las Vegas, NV – TBD
Thursday, October 3rd – Phoenix, AZ – Trunk Space w/ Like Diamonds, Gabi JR., OMW2HEAVEN

Photo by Derec Patrick

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There was also a festive Emperor X EP, Jetzt Christmas, which certainly offers a unique take on Christmas. Current highlight is ‘The 2013th Noel’ which begins as a spoken word electronic piece before morphing into a “cover” of ‘The First Noel’, substituting the line “…born is the king of Israel.” with a whole host of references (ranging from the general of the new Free Syrian Army to the captain of FC Porto). It’s less a Christmas song than a 2013 version of Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’, and worth your time even now Christmas has gone.

Much earlier last year, Emperor X also released a live album, Nineteen Live Recordings, a compilation of excerpts recorded between 2008 and 2013. Maheny traveled between venues by bus carrying only his guitar and a bag of effects pedals and the results are amazing.  The album was released on Plan-It-X Records.

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